Page 35 of The Vampire’s Temptation

Chapter 9

Kenton had barely moved since he’d bid Alessandra to leave. After dismissing Mary for the week, with pay, he cradled his head in his hands, listening to the insistent knocking from outside without moving to investigate.

He didn’t need to.

It would be Lawrence, demanding an answer he couldn’t give him.

Never, not once since finding his mother splayed on the ground, dead, his brothers’ roars of anguish deafening him, had Kenton hesitated. Those stunned moments of anguish had allowed his mother’s murderer to get away, and ever since that crucial mistake, he’d made it a point not to question himself. Not to second-guess his actions.

Until today.

Squeezing the drink Mary had made him before she left, Kenton crushed the cocktail glass with his hands. Shards of glass splintered his skin. He paced, shattering the remaining glass with his shoes and watching the wounds on his hand slowly heal.

He’d let her live.

Why?

Certainly he desired her, but he had desired many women throughout the years. Was it because she was Cheld? Their ability to draw vampires to them was the greatest power they possessed over his kind. He’d dealt with plenty of her ancestors before, some as beautiful, and all of them cunning. Unlike Alessandra, most of them had known about their ancestry. Most had been prepared for their destiny. Most of them had been hunters just as deadly as their prey.

But Alessandra hadn’t known the first thing about her bloodline. As such, she’d only begun to develop the abilities she’d need to overtake a vampire now that he and Lawrence were in town. She would become more and more powerful each day, even with only pieces of the puzzle that was her destiny.

This had been his best chance to kill her, and he had instead let her live.

Hurling an antique coffee table across the room, he bellowed in anger. His brothers would be rightly furious with him when they learned the truth. It was as if he’d spat on the memory of their parents.

More banging from outside invaded his consciousness.

If Lawrence insisted on seeing him now, so be it.

He stormed his way to the front door, then ripped it open and said the words that would allow his enemy to enter. Then, without another word, he punched Lawrence in the face so hard his head spun. Shaking it off immediately, his foe answered back in kind, the fight as pointless as it was invigorating.

They were equals in strength, and immortality, and therefore could not kill each other. Which is likely why Lawrence finally shouted for him to stop. He did so, but only because he needed another drink.

They’d destroyed the furniture in the entranceway, and the hall had fared little better. Ignoring the Scot, Kenton stalked into the front room, or the “red room,” as it had been previously called on account of its red walls, and proceeded to make himself a sloe gin at the bar. Gritting his teeth, he made two.

Lawrence hated the drink, but courtesy demanded he take it—an ancient rule, yes, but one grounded into them by their medieval beginnings. Handing him the glass, Kenton ignored the blood on their already healed skin.

“An interesting turn of events.”

“Not now, Derrickson.”

He needed to think. To understand what he’d done.

“Why didn’t you kill her?” Lawrence pressed.

He could lie to the Scot, tell him he’d decided to hold off on killing her until he had more information. But Lawrence was fully aware her time had run out.

“We’ve pleaded with you across the globe for centuries, tried to tell you there was another way.”

He glared at Lawrence, willing him to stop speaking. It had been a mistake to allow the pompous Scot entry.

“But still you seek to wipe out my brother’s bloodline.”

“Before they do the same to us. And you. Lawrence, I’m in no mood for this argument.”

Lawrence sat on a chair in the red room.

“And yet, here I am, sharing the second drink of the day with my enemy. While yours has gone home, alive and well, against all reason.” He drank deeply, a small frown on his brow. “As I said, an interesting turn of events. Why?”